“Home-Court Advantage” in Tarot Reading
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A staple of tarot reading is the “dual-path” spread that is intended to highlight the more auspicious of two choices for the querent’s consideration. They come in many shapes and sizes (typically parallel rows or columns, and sometimes “forked” arrays) but are usually brief. Ideally, each path will be neutral before the cards are dealt, but there are occasions when it seems that the spread design leans toward one of them as having the “home-court advantage.”
When performing a reading that pits one interested party or tempting opportunity against a second implicated individual or appealing eventuality, often in the form of two parallel rows of cards that “face off” against one another, the concept of “home-court advantage” can be useful in judging whether one or the other is in a better position to prevail. Before doing the card-by-card comparison, it is always prudent to look first at the overall complexion of both lines to see if one of them stands out as the stronger of the two, thereby theoretically gaining the upper hand. But there are other ways to slice it.
In team sports, the team that customarily occupies the venue hosts the visiting team that travels to the “home team’s” location. The assumption is that the local fans are especially supportive (and vocal) while the players are comfortable with any idiosyncrasies of the home field or court environs that might incommode the visitors. Thus, the theory is that they are likely to be more relaxed and energized in their performance, giving them a competitive edge.
The choice between two avenues of pursuit in a decision-making scenario is often unduly influenced by which one seems more familiar and agreeable based on the querent’s prior experience (although it may in fact not be the best course to follow going forward). A good example is the “stay or go” situation in which the former exemplifies the “comfort zone,” bringing to mind the myth of “boiling a frog,” while the latter presents the daunting (but often invigorating) prospect of having to extricate oneself and move on. One intuitively “feels good” despite all evidence to the contrary and the other doesn’t impress to the same degree; it’s common to fear the unknown and this can skew the decision in an irrational way.
Another tableau is the political confrontation. Similar to the way it is done in horary astrology, where the incumbent is awarded the commanding 10th House at the top of the horoscope and the challenger (as the “Querent”) is relegated to the less-dominant 1st House with his or her allies shown by the 7th House, the incumbent would be considered to have the “home-court advantage” in a tarot reading.
In practice, I usually place the favored (or “home team”) party or opportunity in the top row of a two-tiered spread with the runner-up below. There is really no benefit to be gained from this distinction when it comes to interpretation, it just provides a convenient rationale for “who (or what) goes where” without having to think too hard about it.
It is also possible to finesse this this line of reasoning. For example, in National Football League post-season games, the “home team” (the one that gets to choose whether to receive the ball at the start of the game or kick off to the other team) is determined in a couple of ways: one is a coin-toss and the other is a year-to-year rotation of the honor according to which Conference held it during the previous year. In making the decision whether to start the game on offense or defense, it is sometimes assumed to be a good strategy to wait until the second half to take over the ball rather than jumping on the opportunity right out of the gate. In coin-flip situations I usually wait until I know the outcome of the initial choice before laying out the cards for a reading; then I place the winner of the toss in the top row. If the home team has been predetermined by the rotation, I go with that. Of course, the first option requires me to pay close attention to the pre-game ceremony, something I seldom do.
In a relationship reading I tend to give the “stay” option “pride-of-place” in the top row since it represents an established stance in the matter, but if it isn’t a “stay-or-go” dilemma I will typically situate the querent’s point-of-view above with the other party’s attitude to be conveyed by the cards below. Again, there is no real justification for this move other than expedience since the cards don’t distinguish between one or the other based on “field position;” their perspective runs much deeper than that.
In political contests I will usually give the incumbent the top row since it seems to make implicit sense. Astrologer John Frawley likens the individual currently holding office to a king on his throne. When I do “Trump vs. Harris,” she gets the prime real estate because she is currently an “insider” while he is “out.”
I sometimes create layered spreads that contain a single central card (usually stated as the “significator”) surrounded by an adjacent group that represents the immediate environment of the querent or the question, including family and/or friends who are in close contact with the significator (whether it identifies the querent or the situation itself). This is in turn enclosed within a third tier that describes external influences and those participants who, although still interested in the outcome, are less vitally connected with the significator and less involved in its affairs. In these spreads the inner layer “has the ear” of the significator and is thus considered to hold the “home-court advantage,” while those factors in the outer layer must work vicariously through their indirect engagement with the “heart of the matter.” I draw my inspiration from Lenormand Grand Tableau reading, which uses the “method of distance” (aka “proximity”) to determine which cards have the most influence over the significator; in well over 90% of two-card interactions, the closer together the cards are, the more potent their mutual involvement will be (a few cards are stronger when farther away from the rest).
As can be seen from the above, except for the last example the notion of “home-court advantage” doesn’t really make much difference unless the outcome happens to validate the assumptions supporting that paradigm; then I can claim prescience. (Funny that I was just listening to the Kansas song Carry On, My Wayward Son that includes the line “And if I claim to be a wise man, well/It just means that I don’t know.”) In the case of sporting events, I’m still experimenting with ways in which it might provide insights into the eventual victor, although I have had quite a few successes at the championship level. In the others it’s merely a way to sort things out before diving into the reading.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 12, 2024.
